Library / English Dictionary

TOIL

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Productive work (especially physical work done for wages)

Example:

his labor did not require a great deal of skill

Synonyms:

labor; labour; toil

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("toil" is a kind of...):

work (activity directed toward making or doing something)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "toil"):

roping (capturing cattle or horses with a lasso)

corvee (unpaid labor (as for the maintenance of roads) required by a lord of his vassals in lieu of taxes)

donkeywork; drudgery; grind; plodding (hard monotonous routine work)

effort; elbow grease; exertion; sweat; travail (use of physical or mental energy; hard work)

hunt; hunting (the work of finding and killing or capturing animals for food or pelts)

hackwork (professional work done according to formula)

haymaking (cutting grass and curing it to make hay)

manual labor; manual labour (labor done with the hands)

overwork; overworking (the act of working too much or too long)

slavery (work done under harsh conditions for little or no pay)

Derivation:

toil (work hard)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Work hard

Example:

Lexicographers drudge all day long

Synonyms:

dig; drudge; fag; grind; labor; labour; moil; toil; travail

Classified under:

Verbs of political and social activities and events

Hypernyms (to "toil" is one way to...):

do work; work (be employed)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s
Somebody ----s PP

Derivation:

toil (productive work (especially physical work done for wages))

toiler (one who works strenuously)

Credits

 Context examples: 

And you have only toiled a few months!

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Mary never wrote to Bath herself; all the toil of keeping up a slow and unsatisfactory correspondence with Elizabeth fell on Anne.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

That being done, he felt that he was ready to 'hide his stricken heart, and still toil on'.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

But the dogs! The terrible hardship, the heart-breaking toil, the starvation, the frost! Oh, I've read about it and I know.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

Being quite dispirited with toil, and wholly overcome by grief and dispair, I lay down between two ridges, and heartily wished I might there end my days.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Thereafter he walked very carefully, with his eyes on the road, and when he saw a tiny ant toiling by he would step over it, so as not to harm it.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

It was a night of little ease to his toiling mind, toiling in mere darkness and besieged by questions.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

While the telomeres of subordinate meerkats remained stable, dominant telomeres shrunk by a third in just 18 months – suggesting accelerated ageing caused by the toils of raising young and fending off rivals.

(Breeder meerkats age faster, but their subordinates still die younger, University of Cambridge)

There I saw statesmen and soldiers, noblemen and lawyers, farmers and squires, with roughs of the East End and yokels of the shires, all toiling along with the prospect of a night of discomfort before them, on the chance of seeing a fight which might, for all that they knew, be decided in a single round.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

By night it was dead calm and I was toiling once more at the oars—but weakly, most weakly.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)